Gentle reader,
At the end of May 2024, work crews swarmed over the hillside at 1251-1259 Sunset Boulevard, where the last tenants have been evicted from the Stires Staircase Bungalow Court, and felled all of the 100 year old trees shading the historic property—including one that contained a shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary inside a knot on the trunk.
Since 1922, Stires provided dignified, affordable housing for ten households, and shelter for countless birds and squirrels and other living things. There was a lot of undeveloped land on the parcel that could have been used for new housing units.
The destruction of this entire bungalow court compound and the eviction of its residents for a huge new building is a policy failure that illuminates everything wrong with Los Angeles and how the city is creating homelessness and blight, while serving the interests of wealthy developers.
Taking one last walk up the central stair and peering into the ruined cottages, we expressed our anger at the abject failure of newish CD 1 councilmember Eunisses Hernandez to do anything to protect these affordable units from demolition, despite campaigning as a fresh voice for tenants and in opposition to gentrification.
We didn't find the Virgin's shrine, though we did encounter a cool streamline moderne duck and enough rage to power future preservation and tenants' rights battles.
And back down on the sidewalk, we met Justin Berthelot Sr., a traveling music man just off the bus from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His impromptu song made us feel more hopeful for this town, which has always called the dreamers and artists to its heart, and rewarded us all with the fruits of their imaginations.
It is war, friends. We don't want to fight, but we have no choice. So let's fight together for all Los Angeles has been and can be again.
We’ve still got a few tickets left on this Saturday’s POP - Preserving Our Past tour honoring some of Downtown L.A.’s heritage heroes and including a rare chance to visit the Dutch Chocolate Shop, and featuring Bunker Hill lore from native son Gordon Pattison and neighborhood historian Nathan Marsak. Then next week, it’s the Westlake Park Time Travel trip with a special half-price ticket offer for readers like you.
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
Our work—leading tours and historic preservation and cultural landmark advocacy—is about building a bridge between Los Angeles' past and its future, and not allowing the corrupt, greedy, inept and misguided players who hold present power to destroy the city's soul and body. If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar and a subscriber edition of this newsletter, vintage Los Angeles webinars available to stream, in-person tours and a souvenir shop you can browse in. We’ve also got recommended reading bookshelves on Amazon and the Bookshop indie bookstore site. You can share this post to win subscriber perks. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking and bus tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.
UPCOMING BUS & WALKING TOURS
• POP – Preserving Our Past Featuring the Dutch Chocolate Shop (Sat. 6/1) • Westlake Park (Sat. 6/8 - special offer for our readers) • Film Noir / Real Noir (Sat. 6/29) • The Real Black Dahlia (Sat. 7/6) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (Sat. 7/13) • Miracle Mile Marvels and Madness (Sun. 7/21) • Know Your Downtown L.A.: Tunnels To Towers To The Dutch Chocolate Shop (Sat. 7/27 - sorry, sold out) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (Sun. 8/4) • West Adams Sugar Hill and Angelus Rosedale Cemetery (Sat. 8/10) • Broadway: Downtown Los Angeles’ Beautiful, Magical Mess (Sun. 8/25) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (Sat. 8/31)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
Looking for a different kind of Southern California mystery novel? Duane Swierczynski's California Bear is a tribute to his brainiac daughter and a darkly comic riff on '70s serial killers exposed through DNA. Also, Esotouric has a cute cameo! We infected Duane’s creative process previously through our Lllano de Rio road trip tour.
Chilling reporting from Consumer Watchdog: per the FBI, Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer aided and abetted extortion, lied to investigators & obstructed justice around the DWP scam lawsuit. Nothing was done about it. And his people are still in City Hall.
As Nathan Marsak completes his seven-part, deep dive into the real history of Chavez Ravine, Bunker Hill native son Gordon Pattison chimes in on the Los Angeles Times letters page with a reminder that the displaced citizens in Chavez Ravine were not the only Angelenos to see their sweet neighborhood stolen by the government. An apology would help.
Sigh, demolition scaffolding is going up on the B'nai B'rith Lodge, after the Los Angeles City Attorney unaccountably gave in to Catholic Charities' demand to be allowed to demolish this magnificent building—for nothing. Tile master Ernest Batchelder wept.
In Rev. Dylan Littlefield's latest update from his Hotel Cecil ministry, tenant Rose makes an empathic breakthrough, and the saintly work of the oft-abused property managers gets the spotlight.
Something nasty is happening on Terminal Island, where the Port of L.A. wants to destroy the last remnants of the Japanese fishing community. Emma Rault breaks the shocking story with powerful quotes from those who want to Save Tāminaru—and reactivate it.
Cheers to the Biltmore Hotel, just inducted into the National Trust's Historic Hotels of America program.
Old Trapper's Lodge update: In early May, preservation pal @confusionhill101 tried to visit the landmark, but was dismayed to discover most of the sculptures visible from outside the fence surrounding Alvin Cleveland Park are now shrouded with black plastic, a form of censorship. It is a shame that interested citizens cannot even look at the landmark from a distance now. We also have some conservation concerns, and very much hope that Pierce College is regularly checking under the drapes to ensure there is no moisture or mold forming.
Why was the USA Hostel / Cielo Hotel off Hollywood Boulevard sitting vacant to catch on fire? Owner Shaun Tan alleges underground parking construction for Thomas Safran's Hollywood Arts Collective made his 1915 building uninhabitable. USA Hostels shut down all their sites in March 2020, and this one never reopened.
Remember when Mitch O'Farrell proposed Target fund a childcare center / affordable housing for looking the other way on Eric Garcetti's illegal upzoning of their Sunset Boulevard store, the famous sentient Target Husk? That didn't happen, nor did a sale. So: Blight. And now, inevitably, fire. RIP 1816 N. Wilton, a charming Hollywood bungalow City Hall has squatted on vacant since an LGBTQ youth nonprofit went bust in 2008. All burned up now, so maybe one of their developer buddies will take the land.
Stained glass production facility tours resume at the historic Judson Studios on the Arroyo. It's a fascinating building, and you never know what cool pieces of early Los Angeles history you'll find on the restoration table.
After 2919 St. George sold for $1.9M, Kathleen Perricone wrote about Alice Blackburn's slow motion Hollywood Freeway condemnation party. New owners want to demolish for six spec houses. Can it be saved again?!
Preservation pal Ruta Vaisnys shares the ugly stripped hillside where pretty 1758 Griffith Park Blvd. sheltered Angelenos for 108 years. Flipped for land value, the true value would have been to move the triplex back and build a bungalow court.
The Old Red Sandstone Courthouse was demolished in 1936, but that fine Arizona stone was too beautiful to haul to the dump. It lives on in L.A. County parks. See how it glows after 133 years!
Digging this new digital exhibition from County Parks curator Ansley Davies on Yesterday's Playgrounds (1937-80). Giganta! Did you, or your parents, climb around on one of these groovy monsters?
Dismayed and disgusted on last Saturday's Evergreen Cemetery walk to arrive at the Chinese Shrine and find that metal thieves have stolen the bilingual landmark plaques. And profoundly relieved the 1888 Baker Iron Work doors were not taken. LAPD knows how to stop this and we wish they would.
Craig Ellwood's Zimmerman House, destroyed by Chris Pratt and Kathryn Schwarzenegger, to be replicated as a NY weekend pad. This is some serious shade on Los Angeles, where land use corruption and toothless preservation organizations have failed us all. Follow along, and let’s also advocate to see our city to do better with the great tools we've got.
Cool L.A. history gig alert: the Griffith Observatory Foundation seeks a trained archivist to put 89 years of building lore in order. You might even get to fire up the Tesla coil.
Don't hold your breath to see convicted Deputy Mayor and LADBS GM Ray Chan sentenced to prison for hooking Jose Huizar up with the Chinese developers who bribed him: Chan's attorneys seek four more months and the government is cool with that. Also, Chan smoked weed in college, but that has nothing to do with his schemes to defraud Angelenos as Jose Huizar's dirty developer translator and match maker. Or so says his Objection to Presentence Investigation Report.
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